31 Indiana Colleges Move Backup Storage to the Cloud

Thirty-one private higher education institutions in Indiana are moving their backups to the cloud.

The institutions are all part of Independent Colleges of Indiana (ICI), a nonprofit association representing the state's private, nonprofit colleges and universities. One of ICI's functions is to purchase services that can be shared across its member institutions as a way of reducing costs.

ICI tested and selected the enterprise-class cloud storage service, Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network from Nirvanix, to provide ICI member institutions with cloud-based backup services. The colleges will continue to use their existing backup applications, but the backup files will be stored in the Nirvanix cloud.

"With the Nirvanix solution we can leverage our existing backup applications, policies, and procedures, and encrypt data at our site before sending it to the cloud, minimizing our privacy and confidentiality concerns," said Robert Hodge, executive director of collaborative services for Independent Colleges of Indiana, in a prepared statement.

Nirvanix cloud storage is highly secure, according to both Nirvanix and ICI. Before sending files to the cloud, Nirvanix strips the file of its filename, owner, and type information, rendering it unidentifiable to hackers. The company claims that its cloud storage uses "military-grade, multilevel security at the user, data storage, and physical data center levels."

Nivranix cloud storage will help the colleges save money, according to ICI and Nirvanix.

"As the cost of higher education continues to rise, it's clear that these institutions need to cut costs in areas that are not directly related to serving students. IT infrastructure is one of those areas and the cloud model provides an ideal solution," said Dru Borden, chief strategy officer for Nirvanix, in a prepared statement.

Nirvanix cloud storage is "right-sized for our member institutions in terms of the numbers of copies, gateway device configuration, and uptime levels required," said Hodge.

According to Nirvanix, its cloud storage service offers 99.999 percent data availability, built-in self-healing software, and secure, highly granular multitenancy capabilties. It enables ICI member institutions to create subaccounts with their own usernames and passwords and to direct where in the Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network the data should reside.